Friends and Family Test for GP practices

[wendy]

NHS England has supplied the following brief description and guidance for RCGP Members:

From 1 December 2014, it will be a contractual requirement that all GP practices implement the NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT).

The FFT is a feedback tool that supports the fundamental principle that people who use NHS services should have the opportunity to provide feedback on their experience that can be used to improve services. NHS England intends the FFT to be easy and as flexible for practices as possible.

This year, the eDeclaration includes a question which asks practices to let NHS England know whether they are confident they can implement FFT by 1 December. Practices that respond that they are not confident are getting help and support from area teams.

All patients should have the opportunity to provide feedback through the FFT at any time. It is not a traditional survey, it is a continuous feedback loop between patients and practices. The standard question and the standard responses should be used, but can be supplemented to support inclusion.

The initial FFT question must be followed by at least one question that allows patients to provide free text feedback but the practice can choose what question (or questions) to use.

Practices are responsible for the arrangements they make for local collection. They should ensure they are inclusive, but the collection methodologies they use are for local determination, to suit their local circumstances.

Where their contract allows, practices can commission a third party supplier to carry out the FFT on their behalf. NHS England is keen to see practices gain feedback from as many patients as possible but it is not setting a target response rate. The FFT on its own does not provide results that can be used to directly compare practices but, used alongside other information it can help inform choice.

Practices must publish their own results. Practices must submit the number of responses in each category to NHS England who will publish the results every month (NHS England will publish details of how to submit data in due course). NHS England will publish data to indicate the levels of participation in the FFT within each practice as the higher the levels of response, the more validity can be attached to the data. This will be based on practice list size.
http://www.rcgp.org.uk/fft